These are just some learning ideas from the week we did courage and leadership as the theme of the week
MAIN READING
We read The Herd Boy, written by Niki Daly, from our Little Footprints collection. It’s a touching story about a boy who spends his days herding his family’s animals but has great dreams of someday becoming the president.
We picked out some themes from the story: courage, leadership, dreaming, and then we did a few things around sheep and shepherds.
HISTORY
For history, I selected a book about Nelson Mandela from the library, also because the first book touched on a little boy becoming president. The book was quite an emotional read for me, laying out the apartheid facts in a simple but powerful and informative way for the young ones. And so because of that I actually just rushed through it and didn’t get much into details.
NATURE & SCIENCE
There were a few animals in our main book, but decided to focus on learning about sheep. I found a few Youtube videos that teach about sheep….what they eat, where they live, sheep shearing, wool making, etc.
BIBLE
We had a feast linking learning about sheep to the Bible, because there are so many references to sheep and shepherds. So we actually had a story for each day of the week.
- We read about the story of the shepherds who came after the birth of Jesus in Matthew
- We read the story of David when he was a shepherd, also linked this to courage
- We learnt about the parable of the lost sheep. I managed to find a nice video for them on Youtube. Together with this parable, we played a game that we now call “The Good Shepherd”, where I hide balls of cotton wool around the house, I then give them a peg and a bowl each, and they go around looking for the “sheep”…..and bring them back to their kraal.
- I thought of doing Psalm 23 but thought it was a bit too deep for my kids…haha!
ARTS & CRAFTS
We also did the story of Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego; and then made our version of the fiery pit that they got thrown in 🙂
For some reason, I don’t have a photo of the final result, but this I got the idea from this blog, and it has all the instructions.
MATHS
We played one of the games suggested in the Little Footprints curriculum, where I take a number of cotton wool balls (sheep) and hide them all around the house. Then the kids each grab a peg, and try to find and collect with their pegs as many sheep as they can.
From the activity above, they each counted how many sheep they managed to save. And then with my 5 year old, I did some addition where I’d ask, for example, “If you have two sheep, and then save another three, how many will you have in total”.
We also practised her counting to 100, while we practised some pointing and counting for my 3 year old…and counted the animals in the book as we read the story.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Because the main book is set in a Xhosa village, we spoke a bit about village life, the Xhosa language, and taught them how to greet in Xhosa
LIFE SKILLS & FUN
And for fun:
- We watched the movie, Brave 🙂
- I also found this short Youtube clip about courage
- My kids also enjoyed this song on Youtube about being strong and courageous, and trusting in God.
If you’d like to see some of the resources I liked on courage, you can check out my Pinterest board on Courage